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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 12/5/13

Free Abdullah Ocalan - an Account of the Campaign to Free Abdullah Ocalan and all other Political Prisoners in Turkey

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Kurdish people do not yet have the necessary influence in the western world to attract such support from Americans and Europeans. They are appealing to their Aryan cousins and all other members of the great human family who respect and support justice and equity to join the campaign to free Abdullah Ocalan, as part of the movement to deal with major human rights and other issues in the Middle East.

Mandela rejected conditional release

In January, 1985 P.W. Botha publicly announced that the regime would consider Mandela's  release if her rejected violence, and conducted himself "in such a way that he will not have to be arrested' under apartheid laws. Mandela's response stated that his calls for conferences to discuss South Africa's problems were ignored. He said that he would not accept release while his people lacked rights and freedoms.

His declaration inspired the South African people and world opinion to redouble their efforts for the unconditional release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the ANC. The world community of citizens supporting democratic freedoms, human rights and the rule of law should be inspired enough by the ongoing efforts of Ocalan to pursue peace, and get behind the campaign for his release that he might be more active in these matters.  

Ocalan still rejects conditional release

Abdullah Ocalan rejects conditional release. But he has to hide his determination from the Prime Minister of Turkey and the Turkish people because the story and ultimate success of Mandela's struggle closely parallels his own.

Most Kurds in Turkey would judge the rhetoric and action of the former white South African Government's apartheid policy more favorably than their treatment by the Turkish Government and many of its privileged Altaic citizens. Inhumane abuse of Kurdish populations in the Middle East indicates dire social, political and moral decline and requires immediate, substantial reforms to avert its collapse into chaos, massive loss of, and damage to human and other life forms.  Key features of Ocalan's prison writings will likely take pre-eminence in the region's Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment.

Repression of the anti-apartheid campaign

The Pretoria regime constantly tried to suppressed the campaign in South Africa for the release of Nelson Mandela, uniting the entire black majority of the population and many whites who. Leaders of the movement were house arrested, freedom movements banned and their supporters in the media, restricted or banned and police attacked the offices of and protesters supporting Mandela's release. Trade union and church leaders of a march to Mandela's prison were also attacked and or arrested

Repression of the campaign in Turkey

Due to the high risks involved few have spoken out against oppression of the Kurds in Turkey. A Turkish scholar and PEN Honorary Member, 1962 Ankara University Political Sciences graduate Ä°smail Beshikchi, was tried and sentenced to thirteen years imprisonment for communist and anti-national propaganda, and violating the indivisibility of the Turkish after applying Marxist concepts to his anthropological analysis of the Kurdish Alikan nomadic tribes of Eastern Anatolia. Released on amnesty in 1974, he never found academic employment again and remained an economically challenged independent scholar.

Sentenced to over one hundred years' imprisonment, for his ongoing defense of the rights of Kurds, he was released from jail in 1999. In 1987 he was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. Thirty-two of the thirty-six books he has published have been banned in Turkey. In 2010, he was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to fifteen months in prison following publication of the article, "The Rights of the Nations to Self-Determination and the Kurds.'

Carry the Campaign Forward

For fourteen years the Kurdish people and some sectors of the world community have demanded the release of Abdullah Ocalan and other political prisoners, as the first essential step towards freedom and peace in Turkey. The above account gives only a few highlights of the campaign in numerous countries and communities.

Resisting these demands and keeping Ocalan in prison, the racist regime has tried to perpetuate Turkish domination at the cost of enormous suffering to the people. Thousands have been killed, injured and tortured; tens of thousands have been detained. The resources of the country have been squandered to build the military machine, and to carry on an unceasing war against the people of Kurdistan in Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq.

The "Free Ocalan' campaign is a call to stop this carnage and the drift to disaster. The racist regime is not only unwilling, but has proved incapable of leading the country out of the morass. It is a criminal regime, and therefore devoid of any legitimacy.

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Hamma Mirwaisi was exposed to the oppression of Kurds while still a youth, as his education was frequently interrupted by Iraqi government harassment. Forbidden from entering university in 1968, he had little choice but to join the peshmerga (more...)
 

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